Lunchtime read: The Big Sleep

The book reaches its conclusion and in a way The Big Sleep has been two books with the blackmailing Geiger story the first part and then the hunt for Rusty Regan the second. The Regan story is darker than the first and is personally more dangerous for Marlowe and takes you into contact with contract killers, bent policemen and the seedier side of what money can do as a corruptible force.

Highlights between chapters XXVI to XXX

* Marlowe decides to follow up on the lead to Agnes who knows where Eddie Mars’s wife is hiding out but he is too late and the man he arranged to meet has been poisoned with cyanide

* Marlowe takes a call in his office and Agnes arranges to meet and she tells him the details and Marlowe heads off to find her and after getting two punctures meets the poisioner hanging out in a garage

* Before he knows it Marlowe has been knocked out and tied up but the mistake they make is to leave him with Eddie Mars’s wife who lets Marlowe escape but all he does is wait outside and then put four bullets into the man who kept him prisoner

* He goes to the police but doesn’t get thanked for it and then he has an appointment with the general who asks him why he chose to try to go after Regan when he had not been instructed to

* Marlowe explains that he had a hunch that’s what the general wanted and when he explains he is now backing off the old man offers him $1,000 to track Regan down and sends him on his way